Odd Side Black Friday Bottle Release

How many times have you seen people on this site scoff at a 6-mo. shelf life for those IPAs? Whenever threads about IPA freshness pop up, the most prevalent attitude is that people prefer 1-mo. and will drink/buy IPAs they know were stored cold up to 3-mo. Breweries that use a 6-mo. shelf life are generally mocked.

Obviously beer is not perishable--certainly nothing like eggs or milk or cheese, etc--and I'm not suggesting there is no obligation. I'm just wondering how far out is appropriate--6 months? 8? 12?

 

4 months is under all those numbers you threw out so sounds like you agree that it's too soon.

 

You've done a pretty good job contradicting yourself on a single page.

 

if you ask a bottle of 2014 hipster brunch he'll say at least 17 months

 

Seems like it was pretty clear I'm asking people who are convinced 4-5 mos. is way too short where they would draw the line. I'm not talking about swearing off Odd Side over this, which would suggest that no, I don't think 4-5 mos. is unreasonable.

How's that?

So if there are "off" or unsatisfactory flavors in a 16 mo. old bottle of beer, it's fair to ask the brewer to stand behind that outcome?

 

No. I'm saying that there has been no outpour of complaints about the 2014 version like there has been with the 2015 which leads a mildly intelligent person to believe that there is obviously a major brewer defect that causes some sort of early degradation. Not everybody has blind loyalty to a brewery. If people get a shit product, they're gonna want answers. Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

 

Yup, I'm just too dumb to understand. thanks for learnin' me up good.

My point is that answers aren't always easy to come by with off flavors that develop in barrel-aged adjunct beers. Especially when the reports off those off flavors seem--so far--to be fairly isolated. And especially as you get further away from when the beer was produced/bottled. I guess trying to understand things from the brewer's perspective makes me a blind loyalist.

 

Your more than welcome, tell the Oddside crew I said Hi

 

You figured it out. I'm an Odd Side plant. It couldn't possibly just be that I have a different opinion than you.

 

People got burned at no fault of their own. The brewery is basically saying fuck em. I can't grasp how anyone would support that attitude. Stouts should last more than 5 months. I don't know how else to put it

 

@LambicPentameter thanks for the like in the new biff tannen thread. I recommend everyone check it out before it gets deleted

 

This thread is more entertaining than Netflix. I have no skin in the game as I bailed on Hipster after 20 min of going nowhere in line, but just can't turn away. I agree with others who are bothered by Oddside's response. To me, it shows a lack of concern for your customers. Seems a bit short-sighted since these are likely some of their biggest supporters. Why would you push away people that like your product so much that they're stockpiling enough of a particular beer to tide them over until the next time it's released? Especially considering how many people here are clearly purchasing several of their limited release beers (Mayan, Hipster, Mokka, Hazels...). I don't really see people clamoring for some sort of massive GI-style recall. I mean, people have mentioned it as an example of a brewery standing behind its product, but the rational among us probably understand that a brewery the size of OSA isn't likely to have the funds available for something like that. It seems more that people just want their reports to be taken seriously and some kind of effort be put forth to "make it right," at least on a case-by-case basis.

 

He's a treasure isn't he?

 

I guess I don't see this as a clear-cut "fuck em" attitude based on the limited info available. Maybe it is. I dunno.

But I do know that responding to customer complaints--especially in a way that involves compensation--isn't always so cut and dry for businesses with smaller resources available to them. You have to balance making customers happy with protecting your balance sheet and customers, as a group, can be unreasonable and demanding.

I do want to be clear that I'm not trying to suggest that anyone who feels miffed by the response is unreasonable--only that Odd Side (and other similar breweries and small businesses) have to weigh the cost of upsetting the reasonable customers against the cost of having no boundary and giving carte blanche to those who would take advantage of that fact.

All those words to basically say I'm willing to give a brewer the benefit of the doubt on something like this because I like the company and want to support it and the issue seems to be somewhat small in scope thus far.

 

Just drain poured 8 Hipsters - 4 were stored in the cellar (between 55 and 65 in the basement) and 4 were stored in a fridge since purchase. All were sour- poured each separately (hoping for a decent one), but each had a sour taste on the back end. I even opened a BCBBW to compare flavors and they seemed to be following a similar trajectory- not developing off flavors, but literally turning sour. And, just to make sure this wasn't confirmation bias at work, I had my wife (she has no idea about this issue) sample some of my pours and she immediately detected a sour flavor in each pour she tried, both the BCBBW and several Hipsters.

As Bobby Knight would say, "I'm just….disappointed…." Disappointed in the quality control of OddSide, but much more so, in the tone of OddSide's response to this issue.

 

4 months is under all those numbers you threw out so sounds like you agree that it's too soon.
Seems like it was pretty clear I'm asking people who are convinced 4-5 mos. is way too short where they would draw the line. I'm not talking about swearing off Odd Side over this, which would suggest that no, I don't think 4-5 mos. is unreasonable.

Why do you keep saying 4-5 months? It is 3 to 3.5 months. It has been 4 months as of right now since purchased (I don't care when bottled, when available for purchase is what matters). The complaints and sour notes started coming in at least a couple weeks ago so saying 5 months is not correct. Now, is 3 months long enough for a BB stout? I would think if Founders breakfast stout went bad in 3 months they would do something about it. Not BB aged, but you get the point.

If breweries would just start putting Best Buy dates on their product we would be all set.

 

As if the silence from the brewery wasn't enough at first, they responded by basically saying the consumer is completely wrong. I don't think anyone is expecting and "small/tiny" brewery to go out of business trying to make things right with their "patrons" for something that they likely weren't aware of at time of bottling.

But, acknowledging the issue and demonstrating an plan/effort to prevent this from occurring again in the future would go a long way. And I get that the brewery may well be in a tough spot with this. They can either hope that memories are short come next Black Friday, or that there are enough new people entering into the craft beer "scene" to replace the loyal customers they may lose.

 

The important thing to note with this issue is that it has nothing to with off-flavors, in the sense of adjuncts fading or flavors changing over time. This is a straight up infection issue. There is a second unintended yeast in this beer, causing the added carbonation and tartness. The reports are isolated or hit-and-miss because storage conditions do have an effect. That doesn't mean that the bottles that people say taste fine, are fine. It's that those bottles haven't had a chance to change yet. The replacement batch of MW is also bad. This is clear-cut fuck 'em.

 

I'm guessing if the bottles of Hipster has a Best By 12/31/15 date on them, a lot of people wouldn't have bought them!

I get that the brewery is in a tough spot that they're small and maybe can't handle large scale refunds...but you know who else is in a tough spot? The consumers that have supported them and may now be left with a bunch of undrinkable beer. The responses they've given both to individuals (apparently - I haven't had to contact them about this) and to this forum are unacceptable for any business. My company (a much larger scale and deeper pockets...which also just means more customer complaints) literally gives people free money in some instances even when we do nothing wrong, but we do it because of how our reputation is perceived. It seems that OSA could use some sort of consultation in their customer service with this issue.

 

I believe a great many are watching this to see if this may become the new precedent with release issues going forth. Not much of a secret these days that 8 out of 10 that bitch I am done with brewery "x" will certainly be in the next release line. I think Public Enemy summed it up best with "If you don't stand for nothing you will fall for anything". These are dark days in the beer scene where the producer of the product wields far more power than the consumer and sadly it is a situation that many of us have created.